Lana's+LMF

My five Generalizations:

 * 1. Not surprisingly, children between the ages of two to nine, enjoy activities that involve the senses.** Whether the involvement is visual, auditory, or tactile, almost all children (9 out of 11) associated fun with one of these senses. Emphasizing visuals, Janice mentions picturesque nature elements such as “woods, fields, creek and pasture” and qualifies the fields as “freshly plowed” and the rocks as “shiny". Expressing the auditory element of their experiences, Holly told how much fun she had “counting music out loud together” with her classmates and Rose indicated how “rhythm and music” created by the snapping of the teacher’s fingers taught her the multiplication table. Trevor, who is more hands on, “scooped up sand and shuffled it around.”

2. **For the same age group six out of eleven people considered the concept of reward to be an essential component of a fun experience**. Two types of reward seem to be dominant: internal and external rewards. Classified under internal reward is the sense of self-achievement or pride; when Holly, for example, describes how she and her classmates were “amazed at [their] ability to read music. […] and how they felt tremendous pride and accomplishment.” External rewards are further divided into two categories: social recognition and material goods. Either by family, peers, or instructors social recognition is important: Avrick remembered how it “was fun to get praised” for her dance performance, Ryan was motivated when his cousin insisted that he “did good," and Natalie was proud of her snowboarding skills because she “got to show [her] family how good [she] was.” Material goods, on the other hand, such as the "pieces of candy" Rose received when getting her multiplication table right seem, unexpectedly for that age group, less desirable than social recognition especially given by close ones.

3. **For children older than ten and for teenagers, non-traditional classroom settings optimize fun in learning.** Eight out of thirteen females in this age category described a fun activity happening in a place other than a classroom. Dayna enthusiastically reports how she learned sowing at a museum, Erica describes how she ventured into the different natural habitats of bugs, and Sue recollects how she learned about symbiosis when she was "hustled out of the door into the school courtyard.” Perhaps the reason why non familiar locations were considered as fun is because they are associated with a sense of the unknown and therefore curiosity. Students become engaged when they think of the possibilities new locations have to offer. New locations also trigger a shift in perspective and facilitate discovery.

4. **Challenging activities are a lot more fun than easier ones** **for both males and females**. In the age category of 10 to 19, there are only four stories out of 42 that recount a fun experience where challenge was minimal. All other 38 stories feature a high (21 people) or medium (17 people) amount of challenge, whether physical or mental. When describing a fun experience, an equal amount of males and females reported that a high amount of challenge was important, but more females than males were engaged when the activity was moderately challenging. While implementing new skateboard moves, for example, Ryan "kept trying and trying." But Ryan wasn't the only one who tried hard: Brian said about his drum learning experience that it was difficult to "synchroniz[e] your own beat to that of the ensemble," and Lexie admitted that archery "didn't come naturally". Other than these physically challenging experiences, Hugh enjoyed his Go Gamp so much because it "requires a lot of thinking".


 * 5. Unlike what I initially thought, when it comes to describing fun activities it seems that young females enjoy a competitive edge as much as, if not more than, the young males do.** 32 people (14 males and 18 females) reported that competition was very important to them when they are having fun. Interestingly enough it is not the gender that draws the line when extremely liking competition or not but age group. In fact, when it comes to competition younger children and older adults have much more in common than I previously thought. No one who is 50 or older ranked competition as a top attribute for fun, and only one female does in the age category of 40 to 49. Similarly only three children from ages two to nine listed high competition as part of their fun description. The highest amount of competitive people (22 out of 32) featured among young adults and teenagers. In this category, Asuman enjoyed competing against fellow classmates in engaging with English speakers, and Kamina and her cheerleading team demonstrated their prowess "against a lot of other top schools in the region." As expected, individuals in this category almost always associated competition with a significant amount of social recognition.

Implications for teaching and design work:
Designing a fun class is much more than throwing a couple of jokes here and there and hoping that if the students laugh for a while that means they are having fun. Other than keeping the learning objectives in mind, the teacher or the designer should refer to the above generalizations when designing an engaging activity. Luckily these five generalizations can be easily embedded in classwork directed towards a young learning audience:

Creating activities that involve most senses can create a memorable and fun experience for the learner, an experience that incorporates sounds, smells, tastes, and attractive visuals. If possible, the class can be moved to an unexpected location to heighten the learner's curiosity. Also the activity should include some amount of competition as young learners seem to enjoy that element. But most importantly, teachers should avoid dumbing down information for the students to hope to sustain their attention. From what people have described, it is obvious that learners prefer an environment that challenges them either physically or mentally. It is also important that they are able to stand up to the challenge, solve the problem -- be it with some difficulty -- and be rewarded either through material goods, peer approval, or most importantly through a sense of pride and self satisfaction.